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The Turtle Experiment

Richard Dennis wanted to find out whether great traders are born or made.

The age old question: Nature or nurture? In on mid-1983, famous commodities speculator Richard Dennis was having an going dispute with his long-time friend Bill Eckhardt about whether great traders were born or made. Richard believed that he could teach people to become great traders. Bill thought that genetics and aptitude were the determining factors. In order to settle the matter, Richard suggested that they recruit and train some traders, and give them actual accounts to trade to see which one of them was correct. They took out a large ad advertising positions for trading apprentices in Barron`s, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The ad stated that after a brief training session, the trainees would be supplied with an account to trade.

Since Rich was probably the most famous trader in the world at the time, he received submissions from over 1000 applicants. Of these, he interviewed 80.

This group was culled to 10, which became 13 after Rich added three people he already knew to the list. We were invited to Chicago and trained for two weeks at the end of December, 1983, and began trading small accounts at the beginning of January. After we proved ourselves, Dennis funded most of us with $500,000 to $2,000,000 accounts at the start of February.

The students were called the "˜Turtles" (Mr. Dennis, who says he had just returned from Asia when he started the program, explains that he described it to someone by saying, "˜We are going to grow traders just like they grow turtles in Singapore") Stanley W. Angrist, Wall Street Journal 09/05/1989

Trading was Teachable "Trading was even more teachable than I imagined," he says. "In a strange sort of way, it was almost humbling." Richard Dennis, Wall Street Journal.

The Turtles became the most famous experiment in trading history because over the next four years, we earned an average annual compound rate of return of 80%. Yes, Rich proved that trading could be taught. He proved that with a simple set of rules, he could take people with little or no trading experience and make them excellent traders.

Continue reading. The complete set of the rules that Richard Dennis taught his trainees follows, starting with the next chapter.